


Phoenix Rising

by theweightofmywords



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drabble, Grief/Mourning, Post-War, punk!ginny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-02
Updated: 2015-09-02
Packaged: 2018-04-18 17:29:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4714373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theweightofmywords/pseuds/theweightofmywords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Ginny, peace comes in a riotous scream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Phoenix Rising

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing but this work. Characters are owned by J.K. Rowling.

Screams echoed in Ginny’s mind, but the Burrow remained silent and still, as if the slightest noise would shatter the carefully constructed glass that held everything in place. During dinner, they sat at the table, hearing only the broken clock’s erratic ticking and silverware scraping plates. Ginny missed the cacophony the dinners used to be. Compared to the polite silence, she thought it was a symphony. 

She and Harry went out some days to fly. It had helped her some. He would hover a few feet away, his eyes staring off thousands of feet in the distance. Though they tried to reach each other, their words and lips, their hands, continued running up against walls. They took comfort from a distance, their shared pain serving as a glass barrier between them. Look, but do not touch.

Like the solitary sun, she also felt like she would burn from all she held in. She wanted to burst and destroy everything around her. One night, she decided to break out from the mausoleum her home had become. Her feet tiptoed to the kitchen, the silence threatening to betray her intentions to run. With trembling hands but a firm resolve, she emerged in a cloud of ash and fire from the Leaky Cauldron and walked aimlessly into muggle London. 

The threat of tears burned behind her downcast eyes. Part of her felt selfish for not telling anyone she had gone out. Part of her felt free. She just wanted to get away. To feel nothing. To feel it all. 

Ginny had stumbled upon the show by chance. A sign outside a pub read, “No cover! Show tonight!” The room itself was crowded, and in the corner, a band played. They looked about Ginny’s age, maybe a bit older. The smoke from the bar, intermingled with the stench of beer and urine, burned her nostrils. She shouldered her way through the crowd until she was in the middle. She wanted to feel the people around her, wanted to smell them, hear them, until she couldn’t feel herself anymore. 

The guitars and drums roared so loudly she could feel it in her heart. The lead singer was a woman, and Ginny noticed that, in fact, the whole band and much of the crowd was female. She imagined that they were like her in some way– running from destruction only to want to destroy their worlds again. 

Ginny’s spine tingled with the echoes of the singer’s wailing. She closed her eyes and pretended they were taking the place of her screams. She wanted to ignite and burn until she was ash. The noise drowned out the screams of the dying girl begging for her mother, of Dennis Creevey as he tripped over his brother’s body, of her mother seeing Fred’s body in the Great Hall. Shaking her head, Ginny choked back tears as she began to sway in the crowd. 

She felt herself being pushed by the people around her, and she pushed back. She felt like she was in an ocean; they slammed into her, tossing her back and forth. She winced slightly at the pain the contact was inflicting, but more than anything, she reveled in the anger. She pushed harder and harder against the people around her as she began to scream. She was one of her brother’s fireworks, as she spun in circles, her limbs flailing, and in that moment, she missed him more than she ever had before. Letting out a feral growl, she slammed into the person next to her, pretending it was him. She wanted to hurt him for dying, and she wanted to touch and see him again. Like a wave, she pushed and spun in the crowd, the music ever louder in her ears, washing away the sounds of the battle and the people it left behind. Beads of sweat flew off her body, as someone slammed into her, and she fell to the ground.

“Sorry ‘bout that, Red,” a woman with a shock of pink hair said. Ginny looked up, and through her tears, she looked like Tonks. 

“Wanna go up?” the woman asked, offering her a hand. Ginny nodded.

Suddenly, the woman was lifting her body. She looked down to see the arms and hands of the people holding her as she floated across the crowd. This wasn’t flying, but Ginny thought it was magic. She threw her head back and wept, her fire subsiding. Like a phoenix, she glided above the ocean, her tears tumbling down to join the waves below.


End file.
